Monday, February 28, 2011

The Guardian claims that this extremely disturbing video of Pashtun moppets simulating suicide bombings betokens the disturbing fascination with the Taliban. But what if it betokens something far more obvious, i.e. the desire to become a shahid, which they have been taught is a Muslim's highest calling.

WASHINGTON — A top White House foreign policy official rejected the notion that President Obama was caught flat-footed by the protests coursing through the Middle East, though he conceded that the speed with which old regimes collapsed came as a surprise.

Dennis Ross, a staff member on the National Security Council, told a conference hosted by the liberal pro-Israeli lobbying group known as J Street that the turmoil in Arab states illustrates that governments can no longer survive by repressing populations demanding change.

The Obama administration has been pressing this point since taking office, Ross said, telling Egyptian leaders they needed "to open their political system.''

That didn't happen.

"Unfortunately, the Mubarak government chose not to heed those warnings, just as they did not recognize the magnitude of what was about to befall them,'' Ross said...

One reason we can assume Obama was never in the know about Egypt is that he isn't even in the know about J Street. (A "pro-Israeli lobbying group"? Well, yes. But only if by "pro-Israeli" you mean "anti-Zionist.")

I just started reading Julie Rose's translation of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables (a novel I have never read) and came across this--Monseigneur Bienvenue's listing of God's names. I liked it so much (because of what I think it says about the Judeo-Christianity that, along with the ancient Greek, forms the basis of Western civilization) that I had to share:

Oh, Thou who art!

Ecclesiastes names you the Almighty; the Maccabees name you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians names you Liberty; Baruch names you Immensity; the Psalms name you Wisdom and Truth; John names you Light; the Book of Kings names you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Holiness; Esdras, Justice; Creation names you God; mankind names you Father; but Solomon names you Mercy and of all your names, that is the most beautiful.

All hail Heidi, the cross-eyed German opossum who predicted 3 out of the 4 top Oscar prizes. From the Toronto Sun:

BERLIN - Heidi, Germany’s cross-eyed celebrity opossum, came up one pick short of perfectly predicting top awards at the Oscars, incorrectly tipping “127 Hours” to win best picture, which instead went to “The King’s Speech.”

The 2-1/2-year-old opossum correctly predicted Natalie Portman (“Black Swan“) to win best actress and Colin Firth (“The King’s Speech“) as best actor during a series of appearances on the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show on U.S. broadcaster ABC last week.

Heidi, who lives at the Leipzig Zoo in eastern Germany, attempted to duplicate the success of Germany’s oracle Octopus Paul, who correctly tipped each of Germany’s matches in last year’s soccer World Cup, as well as the final between Spain and Netherlands.

“Everything went to plan,” zoo spokeswoman Maria Saegebarth said on Monday of Heidi’s TV appearances. “She took as long as she needed to predict the winners, sometimes taking naps.”...

"Sometimes taking naps"--oddly enough, that's exactly how I watched the excruciatingly unfunny show, helmed this year by a twosome who were arguably the worst hosts ever. (Could James Franco have been more checked-out and wooden? By contrast, a hologram of a long-dead Bob Hope seemed more lifelike. Whereas Anne Hathaway, yang to Franco's zombie-like yin, was over-the-top perky, as if she were playing Miley Cyrus's older sister, Rosanna Montana. And hands up anyone who thinks "As Time Goes By" is really an Obama fave: I didn't buy it for a nano-sec).

MONTREAL — A framed motion of support from Quebec politicians is very nice, but not as nice as conducting business in peace, according to the woman whose shoe store has become the target of anti-Israel protesters.

On Saturday, three members of the provincial legislature presented the owners of Le Marcheur with a framed copy of a motion agreed to on Feb. 9 by all but one member.

“It is a form of compensation for almost six months of harassment and we will find a good place on the wall to hang it,” said Ginette Auger who, with husband Yves Archambault, operates the store.

Since Oct. 2, a Montreal-based human rights group has protested outside store on Saturdays, asking customers to boycott the store because it sells a line of shoes made in Israel.

Archambault, who has owned the family-run business for 25 years, refused “to be told what I can and cannot sell in my store.”

The Israeli-made shoes are neither illegal nor made in a sweatshop, he noted Saturday.

While she supports her husband’s stance, Auger said the position has caused them some concern about loss of business and their own security.

“While we appreciate (wide political support) and media attention, we didn’t want it. We

We wanted peace but this seems to be the only way to get it,” she said...

But why should you have "peace" when Palestinians suffer so?

Er, sorry. I was channeling insufferably sanctimonious BDSers there for a second, and, boy, was I ever filled with sweet, sweet rage. Thankfully, it has passed.

In "honour" of shoe boycotters and other Zion-despisers I'm going to go out and buy a pair of Naot shoes (the ones giving boycotters conniptions) today. I'd urge you to do the same, especially if you live in Montreal and can show your support for this feisty store owner. (You can buy Naots online, too.)

Pace Mr. D., I don't think that's nearly enough. To equip students with a true understanding of historical and regional dynamics, I would make copies of Edwin Black's book The Farhud available free of charge to university students. An exhaustive and scholarly account of the Judenhass shared by Nazis and Arabs--a hatred that prompted the genocidally-minded Grand Mufti to take a pro-active, hands-on approach to assisting Hitler in his Final Solution for the world's Jews, and that led to the horrific 1941 pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad (a.k.a. the "Farhud," which translates as "violent dispossession," but which in fact constituted the most barbaric and savage sort of mass murder by a deranged, ginned-up, Jew-hating mob). For those who don't think that such savagery is not possible in this day and age, and who have convinced themselves that what's taking place in the Arab world at the moment marks some sort of great leap forward, I offer this brief except. It goes a long way toward explaining why Egypt was and remains the world's most antisemitic nation:

Hitler's deafeat in May 1945 did not bring the Arab world squarely into the Allied fold. Many Nazis melted away from the Reich, smuggled out by such organizations as the infamous Odessa group and the lesser-known Catholic lay netword Intermarium, as well as the CIA and the KGB. They insured the continuation of the Nazi legacy in the postwar Arab world.

Egypt was a prime destination for German Nazi relocation in Arab world. Dr. Aribert Heim was notoriously know as "Dr. Death" for his grotesque pseudo-medical experiments on Jewish prisoners in the Sachenhausen, Buchenwald, and Mathausen concentration camps. He was fond of surgical procedures including organ removals without anesthesia, injectiong gasoline into prisoners to observe the manner of death, and decapitating Jews with healthy teeth so he could cook the skulls clean to make desk decorations. Dr. Heim converted to Islam and became "Uncle Tarek" Hussein Farid in Cairo, Egypt, where he lived a happy life as a medical doctor for the Egyptian police.

Two of Goebbel's Nazu propagandists, Alfred Zingler and Dr. Johann von Leers, became Mahmoud Saleh and Omar Amin respectively, working for the Egyptian Information Department. In 1955, Zingler and von Leers helped establish the virulently anti-Semitic Institute for the Study of Zionism in Cairo. Hans Appler, another Goebbels propagandist, became Saleh Shafar who, in 1955, became an expert for the Egyptian unit specializing in anti-ewish and anti-Zionist hate progaganda. Eric Altern, a Gestapo agent, Himmler co-ordinator in Poland, and expert in Jewish affairs became Ali Bella, working as a military instructor in training camps for Palestinian terrorists...

Black goes on to quote a young Egyptian army officer who, post-WW2, was so enamoured of Der Furher that he wrote him a fan letter, as if he were still alive, and hoping that "a new Hitler" would arise in Germany. The name of officer: Colonel Anwar Sadat.

In an afterword, Samuel Edelman writes:

The greatest irony is the contemporary application of the label "Nazi" to Israel by many in the Arab world and elsewhere when it was the very selfsame Arab world that embraced and carried out the Nazi policies against the Jews of Iraq and mandate-era Palestine. Black's work gives the lie to the allegation continually made by anti-Israel propagandists that Arabs had nothing to do with the mass murder of Jews in Europe so why must they pay the penalty of having a Jewish entitiy (Israel) in their midst. Black's writing documents the very core of the Arab embrace of Nazi ideology int he very center of the Arab world that led to the mass murder of thousands of Jews and evenually the exile of more than 800,000 to one million Jews from Arab and Iranian lands after the State of Israel was born in 1948. Jewish communites that had existed for many centuries were completely destroyed in only a few short years.

What began in Palestine and Baghdad in the 1930s and 1940s still plays out in much of the twenty-first century Arab world...The chief lesson of the book teaches how critical it is that we believe that people really mean what they say--and say what they mean. Time and time again, people and governments did not believe the Nazis would do what they promised or that the Grand Mufti and his cohorts would not do what they swore to do. It was a major error to ignore what Hitler and the Mufti said in public, just as we are in error if we ignore the words of twenty-first century hatemongers who preach the making of another Farhud.

And not just another Farhud--another Holocaust (or, as some see it, the completion of the first one).

That should be the message of those who oppose the Lefto-slamist campus Jew-bash, a message that crushes the calumny about Israel's "crimes" and exposes the real agenda--the Grand Mufti agenda--of Arabs and other Muslims who purvey it.

We have the truth of history on our side. It's high time we made use of it.

With the world no longer able to avert its eyes from the mass bloodshed in Libya, and as Moammar Gadhafi’s deadly degradation of his people reaches a new peak, there is more than enough blame to go around.

Primary responsibility certainly goes to Gadhafi and his regime, but the international community that for four decades legitimized and propped up one of the worst abusers of human rights cannot evade responsibility. At the apotheosis of international hypocrisy in supporting Gadhafi stands the United Nations Human Rights Council (with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as its official secretariat).

With the UN Human Rights Council and other UN bodies now scrambling to position themselves on the winning side of history, with belated condemnations of violence and abuses in Libya, it would be unfortunate for the world to forget the sordid history of the central UN human rights body and its responsibility as an enabler and apologist for so many deadly dictatorships...

It's way past time to put official scare quotes around the "human rights" part of the sordid racket's name. Or, here's and even better idea--dismantle the entire wretched operation, lock, stock and Pillay.

It has been 62 years, two months and two weeks since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by 48 members of the United Nations General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948. Only eight were opposed, including six nations that fell under Communist domination, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

Among its core principles are the right to life, liberty and the security of the person, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and freedom from torture or cruel, inhumane treatment or punishment. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, cited one more in an address this week: That the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of the government.

None of these principles applies in the countries that have been plunged recently into chaos by civil strife. And while much of the world has coddled, courted and enabled the kings, tyrants, dictators, sultans and other illegitimate rulers throughout the Middle East and Africa, the people they oppressed have always had the same human rights aspirations as everyone else...

Also, none of these principles applies in the countries that are signatories to a competing articulation of "human rights," one which no one seems to be talking about at the moment--the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam. In other words, sharia "rights" for all!

Anyone familiar with that Declaration, which, for the Muslim world, supersedes the (kafir) UN one, could never have written the following:

Canada has an important role to play in the transformation of these societies. After all, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was largely the work of Canadian John Humphrey, a McGill University law professor who ran the Division for Human Rights in the UN Secretariat for two decades. In his early years there he wrote the first draft of the Declaration and then guided it through its adoption by the General Assembly.

Given Canada’s contribution to the Declaration, we have assumed a historical obligation to do whatever we can to ensure that its principles apply to all people in every nation. Canadians know how to build and sustain democratic institutions that uphold freedom and develop rules of governance to ensure accountability and transparency. We also believe ardently in the rule of law and can help establish an independent justice system that people can trust. These elements are the bedrock of democracy.

As a new political era begins in countries now in upheaval, Canada should be there to help lay the foundations of democracy and promote freedom and justice for all.

The cost of this project is estimated at 50 million U.S. dollars, representing the value of pledges made by Libya at the Doha summit for the reconstruction of Gaza. The project’s implementation reflects recognition of the Foundation’s worldwide humanitarian role, especially after gaining concessions for the Palestinians following the voyage of the ship “Amal.”

The agreement between the Foundation and UNRWA also includes a provision, considered the first of its kind, whereby any funds or pledges received by the Gaddafi Foundation from the Arab states will be directed toward reconstruction projects in Gaza, in accordance with a mechanism to be agreed upon by UNRWA and the Foundation. The agreement was signed at an official ceremony held for the occasion and was attended by a number of members of the Arab Diplomatic Corps and a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as well as a group of journalists.

Following the signing, a press conference was held in which representatives of the parties explained the various aspects of the agreement and the details of the project. They also discussed the manner of implementation for the first project to be agreed upon under the framework of steps to be taken that was announced by the Foundation following the success of the ship “Amal.”

Ahmed Tibi, an Arab MP who attended the signing ceremony, expressed his deep appreciation to the Gaddafi Foundation and stressed the importance of this project, which affirms the Foundation’s credibility and represents a translation of the Amal’s success in achieving its mission into reality.

Ambassador Peter Ford, a representative of the Commissioner General of UNRWA, confirmed the importance of this step taken by the Gaddafi Foundation and the impact it is expected to have in improving the living conditions of thousands of Palestinian families, saying, "This generous contribution from the Gaddafi Foundation would make a real change in the lives of hundreds of families,” and stressed that the success of the Gaddafi Foundation in increasing rebuilding and reconstruction activities, along with bringing materials into Gaza, constitutes a real and important achievement...

Yesterday, he was the UN's beamish boy, a great "humanitarian" who doled out the "charity" shekels to grateful Gazans. Today, he's reviled, persona non grata, just another Arab Ozymandias who's made a collosal wreck of things--vain, grandiose and sublimely ridiculous.

Should Moo Moo G. go the way of Mussolini, Ceausescu and other despised dictators, here's one kooky endeavour (the G'daffy "human rights" prize being another) that will likely come to an end--hiring bodacious Italian chicks to visit Libya and maybe even "revert" and wed a Moo Moo relative/factotum. From a '10 story in the Guardian:

The travel diary of a Roman model has provided a compelling insight into bizarre "cultural visits" arranged by the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, for scores of attractive young women from Italy.

Maria M, aged 28, declined to give her full name, but allowed the Observer to examine her account of a lavish trip to the Libyan desert in October after she was recruited by the Rome-based agency Hostessweb. In her diary Maria tells of an eccentric week-long tour for which she and 19 other young women were reportedly each paid €3,000.

Six such "cultural" visits to Libya by agency recruits have been organised since Gaddafi visited Rome in 2009. The next is scheduled for next month. On one visit Gaddafi tried to marry off one of his guests to his nephew.

But there also appears to have been a religious motive. "He asked if any of us were interested in converting [to Islam]. We all looked at each other and then, incredibly, two girls rose up, something I never thought they would do," wrote Maria, adding that she believed bonuses had been offered to the "converts".

Gaddafi developed a taste for preaching to Italian women during his 2009 visits, and again in August this year, when Hostessweb, which recruits models and hostesses, laid on busloads of women to hear him talk about Islamic culture and faith. "This is all about social and cultural integration," said Alessandro Londero, one of the organisers of the trips. "Here in Rome we have sent dozens of girls to attend Arabic courses at the Libyan cultural institute."...

How...multicultural. Here's hoping all the Italian lovelies who ended up staying on in Moo Moo's Libya have now found refuge.

Update: Egyptian author returns the "Gadaffi International Award for Literature."

Saturday, February 26, 2011

I was a bit off with the timing (I said Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister picked up his shiny prize days ago when he actually got it three months ago). Otherwise, I was pretty much on the money about this absurd (though for the winner quite lucrative) award.

...Many tourist sites in and around Cairo are open again — from the pyramids to the Khan el-Khalili souk to the Egyptian Antiquities Museum. But these days the most sought-after photo is not one of Tutankhamen’s mask but of Tahrir (Liberation) Square, a mammoth traffic circle the world had stared at for three weeks on television. Named after Egypt’s 1919 liberation from the British, Tahrir Square is a top destination for many of the Western tourists who have begun trickling into Egypt in recent days.

“It is amazing what has happened here,” said Aart Blijdorp, a 60-year-old civil servant from the Netherlands. He had flown in a few days earlier to attend the seven-day anniversary of Mr. Mubarak’s resignation, a gathering on Tahrir Square that the protesters hope will become a weekly Friday event to remind the current military government of their continuing demands for reform. “The optimism in the air was so apparent on the news, I had to come feel it for myself,” Mr. Blijdorp said, after introducing me to two young protesters he had met in the square. They had become Mr. Blijdorp’s tour guides around Cairo.

“We have been taking him around because he is traveling on his own,” said Omar Ahmed, 23, a civil engineer, adding that they were off to the Citadel, but that Mr. Blijdorp wanted to come back to Tahrir Square first.

“The good news is he is seeing everything fast, because no one is here,” said Hamdy Mohammed, 24, a law student. “But we want tourists to come back because it is a new Egypt now.”

“So far, Tahrir is my favorite place,” said Mr. Blijdorp, who had visited the Pyramids the day before...

For obvious reason, Lara Logan might beg to differ.

Enjoy it while it lasts, people, because once MuBro Joe Qaradawi's religious types get their hands on things, seeing the sights in Egypt will be about as appealing and popular a prospect as is taking a trip to Iran.

What with all the hubbub in the imploding Arab world, you might have missed the recent "day of rage" in Mahmoud Abbas's West Bank. Sol Stern writes that the day was organized with a specific purpose in mind-- to try to persuade President Obama to back the harshly worded Abbas-driven anti-Israel resolution being brought before the UN Security Council:

The Palestinian leadership pushed hard for passage of a UN Security Council resolution declaring that the Israeli West Bank settlements were illegal. With the Middle East in an uproar from Tunis to Tripoli, President Obama was forced to call Abbas and plead with the Palestinian leader to accept a milder, nonbinding resolution that would retain the condemnation of Israel’s continued settlement activity. But Abbas nevertheless pushed ahead, knowing that the stronger resolution would put Obama between the proverbial rock and a hard place. In doing so, the Palestinian leader made it almost impossible for the American administration to serve as an honest broker and bring the parties together around the parameters of the stalled Olmert-Abbas negotiations.

Now, pay attention to the next bit, Irwin Cotler and Canucki Jews looking forward for a chance to shmooze with this dreadful man, an enemy of Israel and the Jewish people. It contains critical info that you musn't ignore:

This is exactly what Abbas intended when he forced the Security Council to vote on the resolution calling the Israeli settlements illegal. The Palestinians would rather rage against the settlements than negotiate a land swap that would give them a state and make the settlement issue irrelevant. The reason for that intransigence is now clearer than ever. There is yet no Palestinian leader with the courage and vision to declare to the residents of the refugee camps that their 60-year-old dream of returning to their former homes in Israel is—and always was—a mirage.

Multiculturalism, as we know, being a unicultural phenomenon (all the concessions are made by the host to the hosted), a German court has just ruled in favour a Muslim who was fired from a supermarket job when he refused to stock the shelves with liquor. Der Spiegel reports:

A Muslim supermarket employee in Germany was sacked when he refused on religious grounds to stock shelves with bottles of alcohol. Now the country's highest labor court has ruled that the man's objection was justified.

It's not the first time a Muslim worker in Germany has gone to court over the right to practice his or her religion in the workplace. A number of high-profile cases in recent years have involved Muslim women who wanted the right to wear a headscarf while doing their jobs.

But the particulars of this case are unusual -- and controversial: Germany's highest labor court has ruled that a Muslim supermarket employee can refuse to handle alcohol on religious grounds.

The case in question involved a Muslim man who was employed in a supermarket in the northern German city of Kiel. He refused to stock shelves with alcoholic drinks, saying that his religion forbade him from any contact with alcohol, and was dismissed as a result in March 2008.

In a ruling Thursday, Germany's Federal Labor Court confirmed that employees may refuse to perform a specific task on religious grounds...

...Within hours of the battle, Jenin was described as a massacre, and newspapers, television shows, human-rights groups and even governments were condemning Israel as having committed a war crime.

The BBC claimed almost 200 Palestinians had died and the Palestinians themselves assured the world the number was many times that estimate. CNN conducted an interview where its audience was told 500 unarmed Palestinians were dead.

The usual hysterical demonstrations took place, where Muslim radicals and leftist activists took to the streets in Europe and North America, and liberal media expressed incredulity at the sadism of Israeli soldiers. Then the detailed reports appeared, revealing most of the figures were untrue and no massacre occurred.

This was the verdict of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, hardly friends of the Jewish state.

I write this because in the past few weeks we have seen genuine massacres and gruesome brutality. Thousands of people have now been murdered by Arab and Iranian governments and Arab and Iranian soldiers. In Libya, ordinary mourners attending the funerals of people shot dead in the streets were themselves targeted by snipers...

Mark Steyn, who appeared at Rabbi Jon Hausman's Ahuvat Torah's synagogue outside Boston the other night, has a four step program for the recovery of our beleaguered civilization, currently under attack from forces both internal and external. (Thanks to local blogger Right Wing Granny for recording them and the New English Review for posting them):

1. Stop out-of-control spending now and roll back government regulations and intrusion into our lives.

2. Put an end to one-way multiculturalism. It is amazing that a pastor in Florida who threatened to burn a Koran drew a visit from the FBI and a call from President Obama. President Obama has never spoken out about either honor killings or female genital mutilation. Why was burning the Koran worth a comment and not the other items? We need a President willing to stand up and defend Western Civilization.

3. We need to regain our individual liberty. Our government's response to Islamic intimidation has been to find ways to limit the free speech of people who are telling the truth about Islam. Islam wants to use hate speech rules to make it a crime to criticize Islam. Public discourse can be controlled and limited by setting up the state as the sole arbiter of acceptable discourse. The group who applies the most muscle to the government will be the group who wins the concessions.

4. We need to spread the risk of speaking out against Islam. It is time for an "I am Spartacus" moment. If an artist who drew a cartoon or the newspaper who published a cartoon is threatened, that cartoon should be on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Until we are willing to share the risk of speaking out, we will lose our freedom incrementally.

You will note that these points are the opposite of Alcoholics Anonymous-style rehab in that, first and foremost, they call for us to refuse to submit to a higher power (the "intelligentsia," the government, "experts," Islam/Islamists, "human rights" Commissars, the UN, Official Jews, Thomas L. Friedman, etc.); to rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Friday, February 25, 2011

What does this say about Haim Levine [Chuck Lorre] after he tried to use his words to judge and attempt to degrade me. I gracefully ignored this folly for 177 shows ... I fire back once and this contaminated little maggot can't handle my power and can't handle the truth. I wish him nothing but pain in his silly travels especially if they wind up in my octagon. Clearly I have defeated this earthworm with my words -- imagine what I would have done with my fire breathing fists. I urge all my beautiful and loyal fans who embraced this show for almost a decade to walk with me side-by-side as we march up the steps of justice to right this unconscionable wrong.

Remember these are my people ... not yours...we will continue on together...

--followed shortly thereafter by Charlie Sheen's "clarification" in which he explained that referring to said producer via the Hebraic should in no way be construed as an instance of "anti-Semitism."I have to go with Charlie (real name: Carlos Estevez) on that one. I think he'd be as likely lash out at anyone he thought was standing in the way of his two million per episode paycheck. Had the dude been, say, Japanese instead of Jewish, no doubt he would have made some wisecrack about Pearl Harbor or something, and that, too, would have been seen as "racist." I guess what I'm trying to say is at this late stage of Charlie's brain-cell-depleted, corroded-liver life, his words are entirely reflective of who and what he is--a rich, powerful TV star with serious alcohol, drug and porno dependencies and an overweening but completely understandable sense of entitlement, but, in the absence of other evidence, likely not a Jew-hater.

Even though there are no human rights to speak of in Libya and the country is currently embroiled in a spot of bother as it desperately tries to unload its despot, the other day the Gaddafi "human rights" prize was awarded without a hitch. This year the highly-coveted (hah!) honour went to Turkey's Islamist prime minister for his work in rolling back decades of secularization dating back to Ataturk. Way to go Tayyip!

Update:Previous prize-winners (or losers, depending on your perspective) include everyone from Nelson Mandela (recipient of the first GHRP back in 1998) to "the children of Palestine" (winners of the second prize) to Louis Farrakhan to Fidel Castro to Hugo Chavez to Daniel Ortega. (No doubt that's part of the reason why Castro and Ortega still have warm feelings for the Libyan wackjob--because he bought them off with a shiny prize and a cool 250 Gs U.S.)

Update:This one, from back in March '08, just about says it all re the Gaddafi prize and UN-style "human rights":

To the sound of cheers, and by an overwhelming majority of 40 out of 47 votes, the UN Human Rights Council Wednesday elected Jean Ziegler, the co-founder of the "Muammar Gaddafi Human Rights Prize," as an expert advisor representing the Western world. And for its new Palestine expert, the council chose Richard Falk.

Falk was approved by consensus. Canada afterward made a statement dissociating itself from the choice. The US, a non-voting observer, also took the floor to criticize Falk's published writings.

Falk often accuses the US of being responsible for many of the world's ills and condemns Israel's actions against the Palestinians.

House of Dior designer/Jack Sparrow wannabe John Galliano pulls a Mel (Gibson). From thisislondon:

Top British fashion designer John Galliano has been arrested on suspicion of launching a racist diatribe at a couple in a Paris café, it was alleged today.

The Streatham-raised chief designer for fashion house Dior is said to have hurled drunken, racist and abusive insults at a Jewish woman and an Asian male companion at La Perle in the fashionable Marais district.

Witnesses quickly called police during the alleged onslaught in front of dozens of astonished diners. The district is considered the traditional home of the city's Jewish community.

A police source said: "We arrived quickly and broke up the disturbance. The man involved was briefly arrested and released pending charges for assault. Witnesses said he swore heavily, using anti-Jewish insults, before attacking a couple. Both have given witness statements, as have several other people at the bar, including staff."

The source confirmed that Galliano, 50, who has been chief designer at Christian Dior since 1996, was the only person arrested in connection with the alleged attack...

You might not know that, despite his Italian-sounding name, Galliano is a Brit through and through. Make of that what you will.

Canada is--or as least was--a proud Western liberal (in the classic sense of the word) democracy. That is, until Pierre Trudeau got hold of it and "multicultied" the joint. Some in Canada and other Western countries have now acknowledged that, as an organizing principle, multiculti has been an abject failure. Then there are those--such as Toronto Star columnist Rick Salutin--who don't think that being a Western liberal democracy is something to be proud of, something worth preserving, and who argue that we should allow the multiculti cult to prevail because it has substance while the idea of "Canada" has next to none:

...It’s possible that the whole idea of a mainstream is flawed and mythical. Perhaps there are no real mainstreams. We worry that our underdeveloped mainstream will get overwhelmed or undermined by other currents — but that’s how cultures develop. They react to every influence they encounter. All cultures, including “mainstream Canadian” have been constantly undermined, “contaminated” and reshaped by encounters with others. It’s a fruitful, messy process.

So our own version of multiculturalism, which kindly allows distinct groups to set up little boutiques while they all genuflect to some unifying mainstream, is also unreal. At some point you need to have confidence that what you prize can hold its own, trust your fellow citizens, old and new, and hope something fine and hopeful emerges in the mix.

This is why the process of trying to define core or mainstream “Canadian values” is absurd. Many people think our public health-care system is an example of a core Canadian value. The CBC named Tommy Douglas The Greatest Canadian because of it. Yet before it arrived 40 years ago, a major argument against public health care is that it was “unCanadian.” Some core value.

The search for a Canadian mainstream should probably be left to the beer ads. (“You’ve worn a canoe for a hat. . . You feel kind of bad reclining your seat in an airplane. . . And you recycle!”) They do it well, don’t take it too seriously, have the ring of truth, and are unlikely to lead to sectarian slaughter...

How about these for "core values"--freedom, including a free media, the freedom to hoist a brewski now and then, and that most crucial freedom of all, free speech; democracy; equality; and, oh yeah, no sharia, because it's the antithesis of and inimical to all the aforementioned?

When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was in Ottawa he met with party leaders. Present at his visit with Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff was Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, who is one of Israel’s biggest supporters. Cotler first met Abbas in Damascus in 1977 and many times afterwards during countless Middle East trips. Cotler says Abbas “sees both sides of the issue and is clearly committed to peace.”The Palestinian leader’s son, Yasser Abbas, is Palestinian-Canadian and lives in the West Bank. (He got his Canadian citizenship while he was living in Montreal during the late ’80s and early ’90s.)He was the first person to call Cotler and congratulate him after he won the last election. The last leader Abbas met with was Stephen Harper. Alberta Tory MP Ted Menzies was asked to sit in on the meeting because he is also a friend of Yasser Abbas. The two met in Washington years ago and remain email chums. This was the first time Menzies had met Yasser’s father, though. After Mahmoud Abbas left the PM’s office, he went through the Hall of Honour. Right before exiting through the Centre Block’s front doors, a few members of his entourage used the new hand sanitizer dispensers recently set up.

Inifidel cooties being immediately dispelled with a little blob of Purell.

Some anong us see scenes of seething mobs of Arabs and see...seething mobs of Arabs. Others of a more progressive bent see seething mobs of Arabs and espy "freedom-lovers" overturning the yoke of oppression--"no taxation without representation"--who are on the cusp of a new and more democratic future. As Robert Spencer writes, throwing a bucket of cold water over progressive "oracle" Barack Obama, that vision is actually a delusion:

In Barack Obama’s statement on the uprising in Libya Wednesday, he asserted somewhat counterfactually that “throughout this period of unrest and upheaval across the region the United States has maintained a set of core principles which guide our approach.” He added that “these principles apply to the situation in Libya” – and as he delineated them further, it became clear that he was siding strongly with the Libyan people and other Middle Eastern protesters, and that he was assuming that the recent Middle Eastern uprisings were all idealistic, humanistic pro-democracy movements. In reality, they’re anything but.

Obama condemned “the use of violence in Libya,” declaring that “the suffering and bloodshed is outrageous and it is unacceptable. So are threats and orders to shoot peaceful protesters and further punish the people of Libya.” He affirmed that “the United States also strongly supports the universal rights of the Libyan people,” and enumerated several of those rights: “That includes the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny.”

That phrasing itself suggested that Obama envisioned the crowds thronging the streets of Tripoli, crying out for Gaddafi’s blood and holding up pictures of him with Stars of David drawn on his forehead, as something akin to the Founding Fathers of the United States of America in Congress assembled. He saw Jefferson and Madison elsewhere, also, as he added that “even as we are focused on the urgent situation in Libya,” his Administration was working to determine “how the international community can most effectively support the peaceful transition to democracy in both Tunisia and in Egypt.”...

How he can even say that "peaceful transition" bit without breaking out into peals of laughter is beyond all rational understanding.

How can Egypt "transition" peacefully into democracy? Such a feat is inconceivable while the supremacist Ikhwan is in the way.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Addlepated Libyan potentate Moo Moo attributes the current uprising in his land to--get this--Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda drugging the revolting populace with hallucinogenics. (In that case, wouldn't they all be sitting around, staring raptly at the groovy, psychedelic colours?) Oh, well. At least he isn't blaming the Jooos (at least for now).

Under the influence of no drugs whatsoever, I was inspired to revise a Groucho number:

Libya, oh Libya,Say have you seen Libya?Libya the fractured nation?It's got Moo Moo--he's so crazyLSD'd folks very dazy.

Libya, oh LibyaThat pain in the tibia.Libya the next domino.It still sits on the UN HRC.It plotted the crime over Lockerbie.And it harbours the blighter who did that deed.You can barf a lot from Libya.

...it's going to be a binksy ride. I would draw your attention in particular to one most informative link--an examination of Christopher Hitchens's "Jewish" problem. While reading how this son-of-a-Jewish-mum is doing his utmost to revile and trash the contents of the Torah, it was all I could do to stifle the urge to yell, "Paging Dr. Freud."

Because the new "human rights" ethos privileges the rights of the deadbeat "underdog" over the rights of priviledged property-owners (property rights having been purposely and purposefully omitted from Canada's Trudeaupian "rights" charter), tenants from hell with rights galore and rights-starved Ontario landlords are the new norm. (Thanks, Babsy Hall.) And, oh look, same thing's happening across the pond, too. From the Daily Mail:

Evicting a woman from her council home for failing to pay rent would breach her human rights, judges ruled yesterday.

Town Hall chiefs wanted to evict Rebecca Powell, who receives thousands of pounds in benefits, after she ran up more than £3,500 in arrears on the accommodation she was given because she was homeless.

But the Supreme Court said that – under the controversial European Convention on Human Rights – this would be a breach of the right to ‘respect for a person’s home’.

Council leaders and the Government had fought the case and fear it may now be harder to evict thousands of council tenants who fall into arrears.

Legal experts said there was an increasing ‘trend’ for tenants – including ‘neighbours from hell’ – to use human rights law to thwart eviction...

Can you blame them? Even deadbeats are smart enough to go with what works. The predictable fallout from all this: people will run, not walk, to get out of the landlord game, and the governenment will have to step into the breach and supply more public housing (which, a cynic may say, is the real reason for endowing deadbeats with housing "rights").

According to this report in the Jewish Tribune, the Abu Mazen Shmooze With Jews Tour is off--for now. But Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, the driving force behind the initiative, says it could be revived once the volatility in the region dies down. Asked by Trib reporter Atara Beck to account for his bizarre, bonkers faith in Abbas as a "peace partner," Cotler responded:

I did bring up the issue of Hamas. It was Abbas’s view that if he and Netanyahu would come to an agreement, the Palestinian people would support it with a referendum.

If you say so, Mr. C.

Elsewhere in the Trib, Barry Rubin asks a propos Egypt, those who believe true "democracy" is looming, and the reality of incipient Islamism under the auspices of the gawdawful Muslim Brotherhood:

If one side is sophisticated and realistic while the other engages in fantasies, who do you expect to win?

In the Abbas-Cotler pairing, I think we know which one's the fantasist and which the sophisticate.

It didn’t take Stuart Murray long to learn the lavish spending ways of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

In his first nine months as the museum’s CEO, the former Manitoba Tory leader racked up $27,034 in travel expenses, including taxpayer-funded trips to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York and Washington, D.C.

He even stuck taxpayers with a bill for $767.79 for airfare, accommodations and meals so he could visit the Guggenheim Museum while he was on a personal vacation in Spain in October 2009.

Apparently it was very important for Murray to be at the Guggenheim to discuss the “economic impact on city and region” that a museum can bring, according to the museum’s travel expense documents.

Murray, who was appointed CEO of the CMHR in September 2009, wasted no time taking advantage of the facility’s frequent flyer benefits.

After his trip to Spain the former roadie for the 1970s band Blood Sweat & Tears flew to L.A. and San Francisco in November of 2009 to attend a symposium on Canada’s role in human rights advancement.

Taxpayers’ bill: $2,429.09. Cha-ching...

After itemizing several more of Murray's expenses, the 'Peg scribbler concludes:

Great pork-barrel job if you can get it. And that’s on top of a job that pays between $167,300 and $196,900, according to museum officials...

Indeed. Getting tapped for one of these jobs is like winning the lottery. Better, even, because you don't have to go to the trouble of buying tickets.

A college dropout and Muslim convert who threatened the creators of the "South Park" cartoon series and then tried to join an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group in Somalia is facing a prison term of up to 30 years.

Zachary A. Chesser of Bristow, Va., pleaded guilty last year to supporting the al-Shabab terrorist group in Somalia and posting online threats against the "South Park" creators for an episode he perceived as insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Thursday morning in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

Chesser posted a warning on the website RevolutionMuslim.com last April following the 200th episode of "South Park," which included a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad disguised in a bear suit.

Chesser, who just two years earlier was studying foreign languages at George Mason University, wrote on the site that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the cartoon's creators, "will probably end up" like Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was murdered in 2004 after making a film critical of Islamic society.

"It's not a threat, but it really is a likely outcome," Chesser told FoxNews.com last April. "They're going to be basically on a list in the back of the minds of a large number of Muslims. It's just the reality."...

And now a lengthy prison term seems the reality for the "revert".

Update: "Jihadi" is only the latest identity of a Virginia lad who, according to his "pen-pal," was on a quest to find himself, and who tried on many costumes before settling on the one that ultimately did him in:

Chesser converted to Islam in the summer of 2008 while playing on a soccer team organized by a member of the Islamic proselytizing group Hizb ut-Tahrir. He had donned other personas growing up, including brief stints with Goth and rapping/break dancing.

Is Bernie Farber the last non-Islamic multicultist in the land (I ask you)? From the CJN:

...A very different perspective was offered by Bernie Farber, chief executive officer of Canadian Jewish Congress. Canada, he said, is a young country that has prospered by welcoming people from around the world. They are encouraged to bring with them their unique cultures that with all the others, have “built a strong and vibrant Canada.”

Prime minister Pierre Trudeau “embraced that as part of the ethos of who we are and gave resources to make it strong and ensure we are not like the United States, where people get muddled into a [melting] pot,” he said.

Congress has long supported the principle of multiculturalism, which recognizes that as a community we are both Canadian and Jewish.

“Multiculturalism does not deny Canadianism. Quite the opposite. It allows us to be strong Canadians while allowing us to take a look at your culture and celebrate that as well,” Farber said.

He said Cameron’s rejection of multiculturalism was not applicable to Canada. Canada does not have the same problem of home-grown terrorism and the one case brought to light – the Toronto 18 – was condemned all-around, by Muslim-Canadians as well.

He worried that “those criticizing multiculturalism explain their concerns for the most part by targeting a small minority of immigrants and refugees with extremist religious views and use them as an example of the policy’s failure. Does anyone really believe that if we were to abandon multiculturalism that these extremists would simply go away? In the United States, where the melting-pot concept is the norm, has this occurred? Generalizing the actions of a small extremist minority within immigrant communities to its entirety is a recipe for stereotyping at best and racism at worst.”

Yeah, things are waaay different here in the Trudeaupia. For one thing, we have those wonderful censorship laws to "protect" us from the slings and arrows of, er, Nazis (but only the German, not the Islamotarian, kind; Muslims being deemed even more a protected victim than are the Jews). For another, we're immune to the malign influence of Saudi money, the Muslim Brotherhood, Anwar al Awlaki, Al Shabbab, etc., etc., etc. And instead of eyeing each other with xenophobic susupicion, we try to "build bridges" and "twin" with mosques and "mentor" Somalis and tuck into homemade repasts of tasty fried triangles with our "interfaith" cousins.

There's no jihad/creeping sharia/spiraling Muslim demographics here, you stereotyping racists! And if you say there is, you'll have to answer to a higher authority. No, not Allah. A "human rights" commissar.

Of course, when defending the now thoroughly discredited social doctrine of multiculturalism, the one responsible for the whirlwind Europe is now reaping (described here by "stereotyping racist" Geert Wilders) and Canada is on the cusp of reaping, it helps if, like Farber, you understand the concept not at all. Multiculti is not, as he would have it, "unique cultures" coming together to build "a strong and vibrant Canada." It is premised on the obvious and dangerous falsehood that every culture is equal to every other culture, and has something of equal value to contribute to the land. But that's only the half of it. The other half posits that there is one culture which doesn't quite rise to the level of the others in terms of "vibrancy" and which is therefore not as equal--the culture of the white hegemon, who unleashed a genocide on North American Native peoples and spread its wicked imperialistic ways around the world. In other words, hang your head in shame, Western civ., because you pale in comparison to others' cultural/civilizational "vibrancy."

And that, my friends, that Marxist malarkey, is how such "vibrancy" as "honour" murder, clitorectomy and Islamotarian Zionhass (by no means limited to an "extremist" fringe) made its way to our land and has set up shop here, probably for good--because well-meaning simpletons rushed in and sentimentalized a concept that has turned out to be the equivalent of societal cyanide.

But, hey, decades after multiculti came into effect, there's lots more ethnic fare in the food court of the local mall, and that's a good thing, right?

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

What drugs is Charles Bronfman on? Because anyone who could write this happy-dappy crapola must be on some sort of heavy duty anxiolytic/SSRI/mood booster:

...The idea that Israel and the Palestinians have, at long last, been given an ideal opportunity to come to a peaceful resolution of their long-standing differences might sound outlandish to some and heretical to those who think that Israel should now hunker down and prepare itself for armed conflict, or use the Egyptian crisis to gain more time to do nothing!

Despite the fact that the peaceful revolution has succeeded, Egypt will have many problems on the way to democracy. The first is its economy, which was already struggling before the protests brought it to a temporary halt. The interim government and its freely elected successor will have to provide major incentives to business to invest in equipment and create the job opportunities that the people are demanding. Those who massed in Tahrir Square and elsewhere throughout the country no doubt will lack patience. Those who have graduated from college and have been promised jobs by the former government must have access to them – not menial jobs, but the serious jobs that the educated youth expect in a sophisticated society.

As Egypt’s neighbour, Israel can help. Israel’s technological brilliance, her breakthroughs in so many fields, from irrigation to nanotechnology, can be of huge advantage to a new democratic Egypt that is in search of 21st-century jobs for its young people. The Palestinians are benefitting from an important increase in their standard of living, at least on the West Bank. That could be a helpful signal for both Jordanians and Egyptians that with the proper infrastructure economic advances certainly are possible.

But first, Israelis and Palestinians must end their conflict by establishing clear and recognized borders between two states living in peace. So long as they prey on each other, their ability to relate positively to the events around them will be hampered. In fact, from Israel’s standpoint, the status quo will have a profound negative influence.

Israel is no longer considered the David, surrounded by the Arab Goliath. Nor has it been since 1982. Israel is now viewed in the Arab world and beyond as Goliath, protected by the United States. It is seen as an occupier denying freedom to the Palestinians as surely as Hosni Mubarak denied freedom to the Egyptian people. As long as it fails to end the occupation, Israel will be seen to be on the wrong side of history.

That is a shame, for Israel, as the first democracy in the Middle East could do so much to help Arab democracy emerge from the ice age imposed by its autocratic leaders...

Yes, Israel, you had better get cracking and "help" Arab democracies...not want to heave your Zionist arses into the sea. Chuckles says, "End the occupation and everything'll be okay"--and he must know what he's talking about because he's really smart. Or rich. One of those, anyway.

Greetings, Zion-despisers. I read in the news that the streets of Tripoli have piles of bodies, the casualties of crazy Moo Moo Gadaffi who has turned on his own people in what appears to be a martyrdom-or-bust policy. Also au courant (though, given the lamestream media's romantic sensibilities re the Arab thirst for "freedom," not nearly courant enough)--CBS correspondent Lara Logan is said to be "recovering" from her serial rape by savage, misogynistic "freedom-lovers" in Tahrir Square who screeched "Jew! Jew!" as they brutalized her. And let's not overlook supremacist cleric Yusuf al Qaradawi, delighted to be back on home turf after an extended Khomeini-esque exile; welcome back, Q-Man! And that warm glow you may be feeling--that's Jew-love coupled with the glowing embers of Tunisian synagogue, torched by tolerant, loving Arabs.

In view of all that; and in view of the Arabs' ongoing persecution of Christians and chicks; and in view of the reality that the vast majority of the Middle East's map is already--in a word that was a favorite of a German "Yusuf" (Goebbels)--Judenrein; and in view of the fact that Israel remains the one bright spot in an otherwise dark and blighted landscape, you might want to reconsider your Big Lie antics for this year. If you go ahead with them under the aforementioned circumstances, you will succeed only in making yourselves--and not Israel, the object of your pathological derision--appear foolish.

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Scaramouche is my nom de Web. My real name is Mindy G. Alter, and I like to think of myself as a free speecher with a sense of humour. My bailiwick: fighting on behalf of all the good things that free speech helps safeguard, and doing my utmost to highlight the malevolence and imbicilities of those who oppose freedom, whomever they may be.